by Anna Cowan
His head jerked away and he made a sound that was almost laughter. Almost.
‘A squire’s daughter may mean nothing to you,’ she said, keeping her voice measured, ‘but we rely on the Squire’s good will. In our small world it means everything.’
He closed his eyes, leaned his head against the glass. She took a breath and made herself be patient. ‘If you come down, I’ll —’ another breath, ‘— think about helping you.’
The eyes snapped open. ‘Do not tell me you will think about it,’ he said. ‘Begin by giving me something definite.’
He wanted something from her – had come all the way to the countryside for it. It wasn’t sex. She was sure, now, of that much. The rigid form in the window did not invite touch. She wished he wanted only to seduce her, because she couldn’t begin to imagine what someone like him was capable of demanding. She couldn’t agree to what he wanted without knowing exactly what she was getting herself in for. And she needed him to come downstairs or the Squire would take and take and take.
‘This room,’ she said, taking two steps back so that her spine was against the door, ‘is four paces wide from where you sit to the head of the bed. From where I stand to the head of the bed is three paces. According to Pythagoras, the distance between you and me is exactly five paces.’
When Tom was a boy he had owned a set of ivory dominoes. The nursery upstairs was a mess of cobwebs and spreading mould now, but back in the magical days, Tom spent hours sitting in the moving square of afternoon sun building meticulous rows of dominoes. Kit would never have had the patience to line them up, but Tom used to let her knock them down. Looking across exactly five paces into the eyes of this man, something in her chest was falling away like those dominoes had – faster than she could stop it. And she wanted, for just a moment, to go into him, like an explorer lowering herself into a black chasm that just might be endless, and endlessly dark.
‘Something definite,’ he said finally, looking away. There was a smile about him, though his mouth hardly moved. He stood. ‘Condescending and grand, you say?’
‘Please. She’ll be so easy it will bore you, but . . . please.’
He swept her one of those curtseys that would make empresses weep, and sat at the dresser to apply his make-up. ‘But you and I will talk,’ he said, and she knew this was why he had come, and that he would not forget.
Chapter Nine
Kit’s mother sat before her in the armchair by the kitchen fire and Kit brushed out her long, greying hair. She was keeping one eye on the Duke and her brother, who played cards at a corner of the large wooden table.
The Duke’s skirts were violet today, embroidered with small birds in elaborate cages in pale yellow stitching that matched the underskirts. The dress overflowed the chair, but Kit’s eye went again and again to the pale yellow wig. She was learning the movements of his head like a new alphabet: the lazy shake when he was being coy, the slight tilt when he was studying her brother more closely than he pretended, the arc and curl when he lifted his face in laughter.
The quick, almost stunted nod when he swallowed back an unpractised emotion.
He was becoming a familiar part of her day. When she came in from the garden mid-morning and scrubbed her hands, her blood pounded a little harder, because she went to dress him afterwards.
A painful half-hour becoming intimately acquainted with his form. A confusion of textures over her calloused fingertips: heavy silk, the friction of laces, something so fine she almost couldn’t admit to herself what it might be.
Tom’s interactions with the Duke were less elaborate, but his feelings were more painfully clear. His mouth suggested a smile when he looked at the Duke – he was less closed than strangers normally made him. They were playing the childish game Snap, slapping the table and laughing like boys. Except they were a man and a . . . woman.
Kit had kept the Squire away with the promise that they would come to dine on Sunday after church.
Something bumped Kit’s leg and she looked down. ‘Get back to your mistress, pig,’ she said. Its eyes really were ridiculous – too big and soulful for that wrinkly little head. It snuffed her boot and she nudged it back in the direction of the table.
‘You realise you’ll never be able to eat bacon again,’ she said. ‘Either of you.’
‘Porkie is no ordinary pig,’ said the Duke with a wave of his hand. ‘I only eat ordinary —’
‘Snap!’
‘Wait, I was distracted —’
‘I wish you hadn’t let Tom sell her the pig,’ her mother said, leaning close so Kit could hear her over the raucous squabble breaking out at the table. ‘It’s not a very dignified pet for a lady.’
‘Or for our kitchen,’ said Kit, then gave her mother’s hair a gentle tug. She’d made herself wait until she had the money from Tom before she told her. ‘Ma, Lady Rose gave us ten guineas for the beast. Ten whole guineas.’
Her mother lay down the piece she’d been pretending to embroider for the past week. She looked quickly over at Tom and Lady Rose, then pulled Kit down to kneel in front of her. ‘How much more can we get out of her, do you think?’
‘I’ve calculated . . .’ Kit hesitated, because it was more money than she had a right to even think of, and she didn’t want her mother dreaming of the things they might buy. She had seen her family ruined, when Abe Sutherland dreamed of money that wasn’t his yet. She looked over at the Duke – a duke, of all things, sitting in her kitchen and hauling a dirty pig into his lap – and her heart was like a tennis ball thrown hard in the confines of her chest. ‘Two hundred guineas,’ she said, looking up into her mother’s beloved face. ‘I think we can get two hundred guineas, if we’re careful.’
‘Dear God in heaven,’ Ma said, and dropped the embroidery clear off her lap.
Kit picked it up quickly and brushed it off. She pretended to admire it. ‘I particularly like the way you’ve mixed this lavender thread and that brownish green,’ she said, bending her head close to her mother’s. ‘It’s practically contagious.’
‘I told you, they’re leaves.’
‘And I think we should hang it over the dining table. It’d kill our appetites and save us twopence a week on cheese alone.’
‘We needn’t scrape and save if we get two hundred – two hundred, Kit, are you sure?’
‘I won’t say I’m sure of anything till it’s in my hands. And there are still some details I need to be sure of before I proceed.’
She’d sent two letters to London with the Duke’s man yesterday: one to Lydia’s butler, Soames, and one to her uncle, Lord Barton. The first had been easy enough to write, but the second had taken her the better part of an hour. She had kept it simple in the end, mentioning that her mother spoke often of her siblings since her husband’s death, and that she was sorry not to have called on him when she’d been in London. It was the kind of letter she didn’t doubt the Duke could have written in his sleep – polite nothings encoding a tentative request for reconciliation. She, who was practically a social illiterate, had found it a painful, humiliating exercise.
‘Direct from London, you say?’ The Squire took Darlington’s manicured hand and placed it in the crook of his arm to take him in to dinner. ‘I hope you haven’t found the countryside too disappointing.’
He saw the Squire glance at Katherine as he said this, his eyes stern beneath the bushy white brows. The Squire’s meaty body hung from an erect frame, war medals falling like Christmas decorations from his chest. He leaned in closer than was necessary, till his huge white moustache almost tickled Darlington’s ear. ‘It is criminal,’ he said in a low voice, ‘criminal, to house a lady of your genus with what’s left of the Sutherlands. Breaks my heart to see Abe’s family fall beneath their station, but they’ve become used to the life, I believe. Won’t ever climb back up above it. But you, my dear . . . It’s like pinning a Troides prattorum in the same box as a Polyommatus icarus.’
Darlington drew himself even closer, and looked up a
t the Squire through his lashes. ‘You are a butterfly enthusiast, sir?’
‘I dabble,’ the Squire replied, a faint blush staining his cheeks.
‘To think poor Icarus died only to have his name associated with the commonest of creatures. I aspire to die with as much lunatic glory as he, but will be sure to state in my will that no butterfly is to have use of my name when I am gone.’
‘Oh, ha ha, very witty I’m sure. Please be seated, madam, on my right hand.’
‘You do me too much honour, sir.’
Darlington sat with an elegant swish of his skirts. Miss Feldon followed and sat opposite him, oblivious to her companion, Mrs Parsons, who stood behind her, coughing delicately.
‘My dear,’ Mrs Parsons said, when subtlety failed, ‘it gladdens my heart to see you take your place at the head of the table, by your dear papa. You will have to attend to the dishes, of course, and direct the footmen and you know that there are certain things your dear papa must not eat, and then his soup must be prepared just so . . .’
Miss Feldon huffed and rolled her eyes. ‘You’re such an old bore, Parsons. I’d much rather sit by Lady Rose, anyway.’
‘If you’re sure, my dear,’ Mrs Parsons said, even as she sat. ‘I only take on these duties to help you, you know. When you achieve your maturity you will no longer need me, and I will retire to the seaside. I have led a very modest life, and shall be very nearly comfortable when I retire, so long as I don’t use too many candles. A heavy shawl will do for me in the winter, Sir Winston, haven’t I always said so!’
Katherine seated herself on the other side of Mrs Parsons. Darlington turned to her, wanting to share his hilarity with someone who must see these people as clearly as he did. She was gazing out of the window, a million miles away.
She was always turned away from him, thus. He was going to have to speak baldly to her again – an excruciating thought.
‘Tell me about London,’ Miss Feldon said, her body straining towards him. ‘I am sure you have the most wonderful time and thousands of friends, and rooms full of beautiful dresses. Make a note, Parsons, I’ll want to visit Miss Faith and have some hoops made, just like Lady Rose’s.’
‘Please forgive the eagerness of my young charge,’ Mrs Parsons said, mopping at her mouth with a napkin. ‘It is quite overwhelming for someone of her age and experience to dine with the cousin of a duke.’
‘Shut up, Parsons, you make me sound like a ninny.’
‘Apologise at once, Violet!’
‘Yes, yes, my apologies, etcetera. I suppose that London life can get rather dull after a while? Otherwise you wouldn’t be here in the country, would you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Darlington breathed, treating Miss Feldon to the full force of his smile. ‘Having everything does tire one so. Why, only last week I was bathing in champagne and eating a small selection of cakes baked and iced by Francois Delacourt himself, when I thought, “Oh, how drear and dull life has become.”’
That reluctant snort of laughter, he was sure, came from Katherine.
The second course of the evening was carried in – something glutinous that apparently had pheasants in it, orange cake, and a pouring sauce that was an eye-watering green. Darlington was almost nostalgic for Miss Sutherland’s cooking. He tried to catch her eye again, but she just watched her plate and sighed every now and then. Not melancholy, lady-like sighs. The kind of sighs he remembered from his Eton days, an hour into a mathematics class from active, grubby boys who wanted to be elsewhere.
‘It is a great honour, Miss Sutherland,’ said the Squire, ‘to have Lady Rose as your guest.’
Darlington set down his spoon expectantly. He couldn’t anticipate what rude, direct thing she would have to say about his presence in her house.
‘It is an honour,’ she said. ‘We are most grateful.’
. . . What?
‘I hope you are showing her every courtesy your situation allows. You’ll come to me if I can make your guest more comfortable in any way.’
‘I would be most grateful, sir, for any help you are willing to give. Our guest deserves every comfort we can afford.’
And Darlington thought again, and more violently, What?
‘Perhaps Lady Rose could spend a few days with us. If she finds the Manor a little too far below what she’s used to.’
Darlington imagined long days in the company of these people. He felt how ridiculous he would be in self-exile. The world constricted around him, and with no time for dignity he looked a mute plea at Katherine.
‘We are enjoying her company too much to give her up quite yet,’ she said, and Darlington realised for the first time how well she lied.
Kit tramped in silence behind the Duke along the path from the Abbey to the Manor. She watched him openly. His skirts dragged through the mud but his graceful, swaying stride didn’t falter for even a second, though she was the only person out here to observe him. She wondered if he was even conscious of playing a role. The parasol propped over his shoulder twirled in sharp, vicious movements.
He stopped, and Kit almost crashed into him.
‘It’s so damn quiet here!’ He glared at the rose bushes lining their path and then up at the steely grey sky, then back down to the sodden, uneven path. ‘It’s starting to hurt my head.’
When he made no sign of moving on or speaking again, Kit said impatiently, ‘You must have spent time in the country before?’
‘Well, of course I have. But my experience of the country is not like this. One goes to the country with large parties of noisy people. There are dogs and horses and servants. Country walks are undertaken with coaches trailing behind in case the ladies become tired, and footmen bearing picnic baskets, and there’s less of this oppressive silence. I’m almost convinced I can hear everything around me pushing up through the ground.’
He looked over at her with something very like distaste. ‘It is beneath you to be under the thumb of a bit-part villain like the Squire.’
‘Only wealth could say so.’
She could explain to him that grovelling to the Squire was the only thing that kept their heads above water – no matter the singular scrape pride made down her insides. But even then he wouldn’t really understand it, because a person such as the Squire could never loom so large in his world.
His hands were impatient on the parasol, and he looked away from her, already bored. ‘No more deferrals, Miss Sutherland,’ he said. ‘We will talk tonight.’
She watched his bright, elaborate form as he walked on ahead. She would never grow used to the suddenness of his attention. When she shaved him in the mornings his disconcerting gaze followed her every movement. And at other times he dismissed her, easily, as he had done just now.
He wasn’t even conscious of the way he made her see her life as a small, mean thing, or the way he turned what she had thought of as hard-won peace into a kind of clinging, obstinate survival.
She wondered whether a kind man would have spared her the truth.
Neither of them had undressed. They sat on opposite sides of the bed, bodies twisted half away from each other.
‘Well?’ said Kit.
He stood immediately, and walked over to the window. ‘If there was any kind of moon this window would be a lot more useful to me.’
‘And I wouldn’t run out of candles.’
He turned suddenly back. ‘Have you ever been —’ he said. ‘No, of course you haven’t. Venice. Her very winds feel native to my veins, and cool them into calmness.’
A small, helpless laugh left her. ‘You didn’t get me alone so that you could quote Lord Byron’s poetry at me.’
‘No,’ he said, coming back to the bed, ‘I did not.’
He sat and plucked the crocheted blanket between his fingers, then pulled his shawl closer in about him. She didn’t think he was aware how closely he mimicked the pose she had found him in last week. She wondered if his body fell naturally into it when no one was looking.
He finally sai
d, ‘I never saw Byron quiet, and even that madman found a place where he could be at peace.’
‘I . . . see.’
‘Do you?’
She thought she might. With startling, heartbreaking clarity. He grieved, yet he would not be still and let himself grieve. She knew how impossible it could be to reconcile yourself to a father’s death.
‘I think I’m beginning to understand. I’m just not —’ She hesitated, aware that her body’s compulsion to be near, and her mind’s desire to be even nearer, made it difficult to judge this moment. His presence here and her relationship to him were so tenuous – and so much depended on it. ‘I’m not sure what I can do.’
‘What you said to me,’ he said, ‘at L-Lady Marmotte’s ball. The way you – described me. I have never felt anything like it.’
‘Oh.’ It was as if someone had pressed firmly on her sternum. It would never have occurred to her that he had minded. The man had made a bloody pamphlet out of it, for God’s sake. She reached out to touch him – his shoulder, wrapped in silk and wool, suggestive and shrouded – then stopped.
‘May I touch you?’
He stood. He came slowly around the bed and looked down at her, all his focus trained on her. ‘You see? This is why it has to be you.’
‘Because I speak out of turn?’
‘Because,’ the Duke said, ‘I am thirty-one, and it has never occurred to me that my permission matters – that I can refuse someone permission to touch me.’
Kit rubbed a hand across her forehead, down her cheek. She could see, so clearly, how this conversation might end. And because she was determined to prevent it from doing so, she knew he had been right to choose her. Which was no comfort whatsoever.
‘Sit down,’ she said.
He sat – on the same side of the bed this time, but with a human body’s worth of air still between them.
‘There are some things you need to know, before we take this conversation further,’ she said. ‘I saw you seduce Lady Marmotte.’ She didn’t look up, because she didn’t want to know his reaction. She didn’t want his indifference, and she didn’t want his shame. ‘Don’t ask me what spiteful fairy brought me to that music room, but I saw it – you. I saw you. So while I feel for you, I cannot absolve you, if that’s what you’re after. You want me to comfort a boy, but you’re a man.’